Perry Smith

Perry Edward Smith (October 27, 1928 – April 14, 1965) was one of two career criminals convicted of murdering the four members of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas, on November 15, 1959, a crime that was made famous by Truman Capote in his 1966 non-fiction novel In Cold Blood. Along with Richard Hickock, Smith took part in the burglary and quadruple murder at the Clutter family farmhouse.

Early life and family Perry Edward Smith was born in Huntington, Nevada, a now-abandoned community in Elko County. His parents, Florence Julia Buckskin and John "Tex" Smith, were rodeo performers. Smith's mother was full-blooded Native American and his father was Caucasian of mixed Irish and Dutch ancestry, but sources differ on the ethnicity of Smith's mother. Truman Capote himself stated that Smith was IrishCherokee, saying so in various interviews and in his book. But in his 2019 true crime book And Every Word Is True, Gary McAvoy wrote that Smith's mother was not Cherokee at all, rather she was of mixed Western ShoshoneNorthern Paiute ancestry. The family moved to Juneau, Alaska, in 1929, where the elder Smith distilled bootleg whisky for a living. Smith's father abused his wife and four children, and in 1935 his wife left him, taking the children with her to San Francisco, California. tried to drown him. In his adolescence, Smith reunited with his father, Tex, and together they lived an itinerant existence across much of the western United States. Smith also spent time in different juvenile detention homes after joining a street gang and becoming involved in petty crime. In the mid-1960s, Tex moved to Cold Springs, Nevada, where he lived to the age of 92 before dying by suicide in 1986, distraught over poor health. Two of Smith's siblings died by suicide as young adults, and the remaining sister eliminated any contact with him.

Military service and life in Washington At age 16, Smith joined the United States Merchant Marine. He joined the United States Army in 1948, where he served in the Korean War. During his stint in the Army, Smith spent weeks at a time in the stockade for public carousing and fighting with Korean civilians and other soldiers. In spite of his record, Smith was honorably discharged in 1952 and was last stationed at Fort Lewis, Washington. which is where he first met Richard Hickock. Smith was eventually paroled, and the pair later resumed their acquaintance upon Hickock's release in November 1959. Hickock allegedly wrote to Smith, asking him to violate his parole by returning to Kansas to assist Hickock with a robbery he had been planning. Smith claimed that his return was initially motivated not by meeting with Hickock, but by the chance to reunite with another former inmate, Willie-Jay, with whom he had developed an especially close bond while in prison; Smith soon discovered, however, that he had arrived in the Kansas City area just a few hours after Willie-Jay had left for the East Coast.

Smith met with Hickock, and almost immediately the two set out to work out Hickock's plan. Driving west to Holcomb, they entered the Clutter home through an unlocked door late in the evening of November 14, 1959, where they bound, gagged, and then murdered the four family members present: Herbert Clutter and his wife Bonnie, and their children, Nancy, 16, and Kenyon, 15. Hickock later testified that he had gotten the idea to rob the Clutters after being told by former cellmate Floyd Wells, who had worked as a farmhand for the Clutters, that there was a safe in the family's house containing $10,000. When they invaded the house, however, they discovered that there was no such safe. After six weeks at large, mostly spent roaming the country, Smith and Hickock were captured in Las Vegas, Nevada, on December 30, 1959, following an extensive manhunt which extended into Mexico.

Relationship with Truman Capote During research for his novel In Cold Blood, Truman Capote extensively interviewed Smith and eventually befriended him.

Execution Smith and Hickock were executed by hanging on April 14, 1965. They requested a last meal of spiced shrimp, french fries, garlic bread, ice cream, and strawberries with whipped cream. Smith was hanged second, dying at 1:19 a.m. On December 19, 2012, officials in Kansas exhumed the bodies of Smith and Hickock and retrieved bone fragments to compare their DNA to semen found in the pants of Christine Walker.

In August 2013, the Sarasota County Sheriff's Office announced they were unable to find a match between the DNA of Smith or Hickock and the samples in the Walker family murder. Only partial DNA could be retrieved, possibly due to degradation of the DNA samples over the decades or contamination in storage, making the outcome uncertain (neither proving nor disproving the involvement of Smith and Hickock). Investigators stated that Smith and Hickock still remain the most viable suspects. However, in 2023, other investigators working on the case expressed doubt about this notion, stating that DNA tests performed by the Kansas Bureau of Investigation excluded Hickock and Smith.

Film portrayals Smith was portrayed in the 1967 film version of In Cold Blood by Robert Blake, by Eric Roberts in the 1996 TV miniseries adaptation; by Clifton Collins Jr. in 2005's Capote; and by Daniel Craig in 2006's Infamous.